The Blog writing has been on the back burner whilst I spent time refurbishing my two 1900s, mahogany and brass bellows camera.
The Boots camera is a single-rack camera and less useful so I decided to refurbish this one keeping it as original as possible. The Hora camera is slightly more modern by 10 -20 years and has a double rack and pinion adjustment making it much more useable since focussing can be accomplished without changing the distance between the lens and the object. This Hora camera then was to be refurbished to make it as useable as possible.
Each camera was stripped down, as far as possible, to its component parts.
The wood was cleaned with “Soft Finish” remover to gently lift off grime leaving the patina intact. The wood was finished with liquid wax. All sliding surfaces had a light dressing of graphite powder to ease movement.
The brass was in a badly corroded state in many places.
The worst was treated to a light sanding with 600 wet&dry then polished with a cream cleaner. After completing the first camera my fingers hurt so I purchased a battery powered Dremel to do the buffing. However this new Dremel was dreadfully underpowered and stalled with the lightest pressure at the slow and medium speeds. After finishing the cleaning using the high speed only I returned the Dremel to Amazon who refunded me fully.
As the pictures show the bellows of the newer, Hora camera have had a lot of bookbinding tape applied to cover light leaks.
I bought, from a supplier in China, replacement bellows and glued them in place with flexible adhesive. Whilst the new bellows are fully light tight they are less stiff that the original and sag quite a bit. To address this I have attached a brass ring to the middle section of the bellows and use a tensioning wire to hold the bellows up. This is a period feature on some other cameras of this type.
The Boots camera had its glass screen cleaned with 1200 grit wet&dry carborundum paper. I still haven’t removed all the marks, but the glass is much clearer in use. It does still need new bellows but I want to locate a leather type to look more original than the Chinese polyester version.
Both cameras have now been completed.
because of the cleaning and lubricating graphite, are much easier to use. and I have taken some very pleasing images with them since the refurbishments, an example of which is below. More images to follow in my next blog.
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